In the context of the present invention, the terms “mounting part” and “mounting parts” are to be understood as fitting or accessory parts which are affixed to vehicles by series production or after sales. Examples include inter alia indirect vision systems, mirror replacement systems, mirrors or mirror assemblies, cameras, illumination components or signalers. In the following description, the indirect vision system is picked out from these exemplary possibilities, but the description is not limited thereto.
Indirect vision systems for vehicles are supported with a known construction and way of mounting on a body part of a vehicle via a fastening device. The fastening device may be implemented in the nature of a support arm which has one of its ends fixed on the side of the vehicle body and carries the indirect vision system with its other free end.
Both for adjusting purposes and for the purpose of providing protection against collisions and accidents, such support arms are designed to be pivotable or rotatable with respect to the vehicle body. To this end, a bearing assembly is used which guides the support arm or cantilever arm in a rotatable or pivotable manner. For ensuring defined operational positions or locations, such bearing assemblies frequently include a latching geometry which acts as a latching means and is under spring tension. In operation, said latching means has to be able to take up the regular forces acting on it in order to hold the indirect vision system in its operating position. The term “regularly acting forces” is to be understood here in particular as wind-induced forces and vibrations or the like which occur during the driving operation.
Upon exceeding a limit value of the force which acts on the bearing device, the spring-induced latching effect of the bearing assembly is canceled, so that for instance in the event of a collision with an obstacle, a heavy impact or shock or the like, the support arm and hence the indirect vision system may perform a corresponding evasive movement. Large-size indirect vision systems, for instance large-area mirror systems may exert comparably high forces, i.e. torques on the bearing assembly in operation in particular due to their air resistance but also due to their own weight, acting both in the sense of an unlatching process of the latching device or latching geometry there and subjecting the bearing assembly itself with bending torques. In order to ensure that the operating position of the support or cantilever arm is safely maintained and/or the bearing assembly is capable of taking up the torque load, the respective active surfaces in the latching geometry and/or the support faces in the bearing assembly have to be designed in a correspondingly large size. This has the direct consequence that the active surfaces are subjected to a correspondingly high wear in the case of frequent use of the rotary bearing. Further, large active surfaces require correspondingly large dimensions of the bearing, which is undesirable in many cases because of design reasons.
It is thus the object of the present invention to design a bearing assembly in question in such a manner that it can withstand high loads in the operating position with a small installation space and has a high resistance to wear.